


you are the moon that breaks the night

by serafinawitchwoman



Category: Underworld (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Gore, Childhood Friends to Lovers, F/M, Friends to Lovers, am i a predictable basic bitch? yes., blood tw, can i be stopped? never., courtship via fighting, death tw, no beta we die like Lycans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 02:14:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20166475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serafinawitchwoman/pseuds/serafinawitchwoman
Summary: They were children, once, together, and they fell in love.There is no story more awful than that.





	you are the moon that breaks the night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Istezada](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Istezada/gifts).

> I blame her for getting me unhealthily invested in these films in the first place.
> 
> _ouroboros_: (n.) ancient symbol of a snake or serpent eating its own tail, variously signifying infinity and the cycle of birth and death.

It ends with the pair of them looking into each other’s eyes. He has such beautiful color-changing eyes, always has, even now, wide and bloodshot and staring as he surges from the floor, shouts across the room. “No, no, no, Sonja, _look at me!_ Keep your eyes on me!”

Even at the end of it all, he is still desperately fighting. Trying to protect her. Trying to make it better. She can see it on his face, how badly he wants to reach for her, and stroke her hair, and tell her it will all be all right. They’ll be fine, the three of them. Their little family.

But it would be a lie, and a cruel one, and he has never been cruel to her, only kind.

She has never deserved his kindness. Not once in her life.

“I love you,” he gasps, bound and bleeding on the floor. As though the force of the truth hurts his throat. It’s their last chance to ever say it. His beautiful eyes fixed on her, his body leaning towards her. Desperately reaching to hold her, to reassure her, even though it’s hopeless. Even still.

_Little one, _she thinks, in awe, _your father loves us so much. We’ve been so lucky. What a miracle._

“And I love you,” she hears herself whisper. Because she does, and if she’s going to leave him here, he has to know.

_Take it with you,_ she urges him silently. _Carry my love with you in your heart. Believe in it. It will never go away. I promise you that. I promise. I can give you that much._

What she says out loud is “Your place will not be here when this is over, will it?”

_Go safely. Be free. Take your freedom, my darling. Burn this whole castle to the ground, and forget us all, and be safe._

What she says out loud is “Goodbye, my love.”

Then she looks away. Away from his eyes. Up into the light.

It is beautiful, even as it burns.

—

It begins like this:

In the middle of the night, in a cell covered with dirty straw, a she-wolf gives birth under the full moon. The child is not a pup, but a human, small and pink and squalling in the filth. The she-wolf, following an instinct she’d forgotten she ever had, picks it up in her forelimbs

(_arms_)

and holds it to her teat to suckle.

Less than an hour later, the dead-man-thing comes, smelling of old decay and dust and ice, holding a man-weapon in his hand, of the sort the dead-man-things use to kill her pack members. She snarls, crouches down over her baby, braces herself to fight.

On the floor, the infant gets a spray of his mother’s blood in his mouth, and screams.

—

“You mustn’t kill him, Viktor.”

“It is not a him, it is an _abomination_ —”

“He is humanoid, and he could be useful,” Ilona says sharply. “He is not a beast. We could train him, raise him up. Perhaps make use of him, as a loyal soldier. He could help put an end to William’s pestilence, aid the Death Dealers in our quest.”

“You are sentimental and womanish,” Viktor snarls. “A savage beast, within these walls? He will get us all killed!”

“We are losing this war, and you know it!” Ilona shouts. “If we do not change our tactics, if we do not make use of the child, we will all be killed anyway!”

—

She names him Lucian, which means _light_.

—

It begins like this:

In the middle of the day, in a dark room cloaked in sumptuous red velvet and silk, damask curtains drawn against the light, a vampire woman gives birth in a wash of blood. This much blood is not supposed to come out of a vampire. This is not how immortals are supposed to die.

_When I said I wanted to die in bed at home,_ the Lady Ilona Báthory thinks to herself, _this is not what I meant._

She is too weak to scream. The only sound is the high, thin shrieking of the baby girl resting on her chest, nuzzling for blood or milk. Beautiful, Ilona thinks dazedly. Pale, like her father, but with the thick dark hair and dark eyes of her grandmothers. So beautiful. Her eyes are already open, staring up at her mother’s face with pity, or anger, or acceptance.

“Sonja,” Ilona gasps, to her husband, standing at the bedside with an iron grip on her hand. She has such wisdom in her eyes. “Her name is Sonja.”

“Sonja,” Viktor says hoarsely. “Ilona, _no_—”

The child, sensing that the rise and fall of her mother’s chest has stopped, begins to scream.

Across the castle, hundreds of yards away, a three-year-old boy hears the screaming, like the wailing of a horrible ghost, and smells the dead-blood already rising through the air, and starts to cry.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Howl”, by Florence + the Machine, because I love being on the nose.


End file.
